Joe Louis Arena and other NHL rinks will remain without NHL games until Jan. 14. / Paul Sancya, AP

by Kevin Allen, USA TODAY Sports

by Kevin Allen, USA TODAY Sports

With no end in sight to the 96-day-old NHL lockout, the league announced Thursday that it is canceling games through Jan. 14, moving it potentially closer to another lost season.

The announcement knocks another 99 games off the schedule and brings the total canceled to 625, or 50.8% of the season.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has said he would not accept less than a 48-game schedule and the latest announcement would bring the league close to where it would need to start to accommodate that number of games.

The 1994-95 season, which was shortened to 48 games by a lockout, started on Jan. 20 and ran through June 24. A settlement was reached on Jan. 11. The full season was canceled during the 2004-05 lockout.

NHL owners and players are stalemated on their negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement, and players are voting to decide whether to have the NHL Players' Association announce that it no longer will represent the players. That would allow players to pursue antitrust litigation to have the lockout declared illegal.

Players are expected to approve that measure, but the voting will not be completed until Friday.

The NHL has filed an unfair labor practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board and also a class-action lawsuit in federal court in New York, claiming that the disclaimer of interest would merely be a ploy and not a true desire of players to dissolve the union.

The NBA players made a similar move during their lockout and reached an agreement 12 days later.

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly said there had been no contact with the NHLPA and that he was not going to characterize Thursday's cancellation announcement and let it stand on its own.

During a Wednesday interview with Sportsnet 590, Daly also said he wouldn't reveal a drop-dead date.

"If you do the math and do what a responsible compression might look like ... you know what the neighborhood is of when we need to be playing hockey in order to be playing hockey this (season)," he said. "I don't think setting an absolute date necessarily serves any purpose at this point."